Two stories ran on Deadline last night which attached a star and a director to the US TV adaptation of Joe Hill’s comic book series Locke & Key.

The director is a HeyUGuys favourite, Mark Romanek, whose recent film adaptation of Kazuo Ishiguro’s Never Let Me Go is attracting talk of Oscar and was a very accomplished piece of work.

The series is based around a family recovering from the sudden loss of the father and move into a nicely creepy New England mansion where keys and doors lay hidden for the mother and three children to discover. Using the keys the family involve themselves in supernatural shenanigans with restless spirits figuring in stories which so far have propelled the comic book series through three storylines and into a fourth.

It’s a compelling setup and the involvement of Romanek in his first TV production instantly throws me on board. Australian actress Miranda Otto, known to most as the headstrong Witch King skewerer Éowyn from Peter Jackson’s Lord of the Rings has been tipped to play Mother Locke. Men of the moment Roberto Orci and Alex Kurtzman will have their producing trousers on for this one, while the man behind Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles, Josh Friedman, wrote the pilot on which Fox and Dreamworks TV are pinning their hopes.

Interesting times, this could be one to watch.